Posted in General Posts by logan brendel on 9/20/2011
After a great month in Romania my team and I have left Oradea and made our way to Bihar, India. Romania was a lot of fun, the kids we got to spend time with were really amazing. I was able to spend my mornings working in their Garden (which was really peaceful). They have set it up for the kids and their families, to supply them with fresh produce. In my afternoons I play lots and lots of soccer with them, which was great. It was hard for my team and me to leave this ministry behind, we felt like we really connected with this group of kids, and feel blessed to have formed some deep relationships with them, but the month was wearing on me as well, so I was a little ready to go. My body was constantly tired and my energy level very low. Most times I wasn't sure how I was going to run around and deal with their high intensity, but through the grace of God every time we would hang out with the kids I would forget how tired I was and run around and get crazy until it was dinner time. I will admit I was a little sad leaving the kids in Romania , but it's nice knowing they are in good hands, and we were able to leave knowing we reached some of them.
We are now ending our first week in India, and things here are crazy. This country is unlike anything I have ever experienced. There are people everywhere, the driving and the roads I could talk about for days upon weeks. Here is all you need to know about them though; the lines are there, sort of, forguidelines, slash if it's night you know where the road is. To drive directly at another car and swerve at the last moment while weaving in and out of cyclists, cows, pedestrians, and goats and their herd while repeatedly hitting the horn is a common practice here in India. It's like playing a game of "Frogger," with out a doubt the most intense driving experience of my life, but our driver could compete with the likes of Michael Schumacher and the rest of the Formula One race squad any day, I am confident in that. The food is amazing! Every meal gets better and better. We are staying with an organization called Gems, which is this huge group with ministries all over India, and we happen to be at probably the one with the most going on at the moment. This place almost has its own village set up within another village. They have schools for K-12, a Bible college, Nursing school, a seamstress trade school for Women in need of a skill set who have come from broken families, a Polio clinic/ home, a hospital with a dentist office, an auto mechanic shop to service all the school bus's and company cars, pre school, barber shop, canteen, and living quarters for all the kids and missionaries and their families. This is just what I can think of right now. They also have a printing press for assignments, and offices dedicated to the survival and organization of the place. A lot has gone on so far in the short time here. We are responsible for the redecorating of one of the preschool buildings, which means we are cleaning and replacing the ceilings and washing and repainting the walls. One really cool thing is, we get to paint cartoon characters of our choosing all over the walls for the kids to enjoy, which should be fun.
Morning in India is dedicated to the preschools, then we have lunch, and after that it's up to us to find whatever ministry we feel we are being called to for the day or week. I got to play my first game of Cricket last Sunday, which was a blast, and a little more difficult than I had imagined it to be, but lots of fun. At night from seven to eight or eight thirty they play volleyball and Badminton, which my friend Logan and I have been getting down on. We have been hanging out with the kids with Polio, singing songs and playing games, the kids are super funny and a joy to be around. I played soccer with about eighty little kids on campus, which was extremely chaotic and didn't really go as I thought it would. They kept asking me to pick the ball up and kick it as high as I could, and rejoice with screams and laughter if it did in fact go high. They were very high energy and ask us back, but I'm not sure if I can handle much more of a crowd of fifteen or twenty kids hanging on my arms and legs every step I take, we will see. Our escorts and contacts are some really great guys, we do morning devotion with them and they help us out with whatever we need and also translate for us. I played a game of chess with one of them last night and he annihilated me. It was a good experience and I'm confident I will have his number before the month is up. He also plays the guitar for the church and the morning devotionals, and has lessons everyday from five to six that I'm going to sit in and see if I can't figure out how to play one of these things. The people here are so nice it's crazy, unlike any sort of hospitality I have ever witnessed. The weather is nothing like lovely California, it’s hotter than Hades and super humid as well, I am pretty much constantly sweating and wake up sweating too. It has been taking some getting used to, but I’ve never looked forward to a cold shower so much, that's for sure. The family putting us up in their house is really great people as well. The man of the house Joseph has been feeding this flock of doves every morning on the roof of the house for a good while now and has given me the go ahead to take over, which since this morning is really cool. The birds are beautiful and it's really peaceful on the roof, a great place to get some time to myself before the madness of the day begins. I am so glad we have been placed here, and have the good fortune to witness and be a part of something big going on in India.
To all my supporters and my friends and family back home. I miss and love all of you, and can't thank you enough for your support and prayers. Without you people this wouldn't be possible and my group is absolutely thankful too. We are all being well taken care of and are healthy as of this moment. We are praying for all of you and I can't wait to find time again to have a few moments to write more and fill you in on all of the stuff going on. I will admit I have been slacking on the blogs, but will let you know most days I am just too tapped to get my brain working by the end of the day. Forgive me and I will try to be more enthusiastic and motivated to get these things pumped out. In the mean time thanks and God bless.
Hanging with the kids on the trampoline
Me and my new friends from the Garden
the view from the roof out back
the Doves that get fed on the roof. They are awesome!
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Posted in General Posts by logan brendel on 7/31/2011
Hello everyone! It's nice to hear from all of you, I think about all of you and wish you could be by my side enjoying this beautiful land God has given us. Bulgaria is an amazing place! We work hard all week long and on Saturdays we get end early to go explore the country. Last Saturday we went hiking in the mountains. We made our way through some gorgeous scenery, and stopped off at a waterfall with a swimming hole. Some of the group swam and the others skipped rocks and caught frogs, but we mostly relaxed. It rained on us on our way back to the car, but it was still in the mid seventies so it felt great. Our Hosts here are so amazing, I can't say enough about them. We have been continuing our work around the place we have been staying, trying to further Rueman's vision of what this place is going to be. It makes me feel like we are adding another piece to the puzzle. We don't get to see the immediate effects of our labor, but I know we are building a sanctuary for future people to come and have a place to rest in the Lord. My group and I are blessed daily, and I know it'sbecause we have such a strong support system back home that is praying for us, and I thank you so much for your love and support.
OK tangent, but funny, while my group leader and I have been clearing brush (which the natives like to call the jungle). We have come across many odd things in our digging. I have found more shoes, sweaters, shirts, jackets, broken bottles of alcohol, broken plates, spoons, and cow bones in one area that I can't even keep count. I have a few theories, none of them factual, none of them logical, and it's a two-parter, but follow me with this if you will: First thing, the plates and spoons, they must have not had a dishwasher and they had to hand wash everything. Second, the Bottles of alcohol, we are talking several liquor stores could be filled if you pieced each of these back together. So I assume that the folks who inhabited the land before Rueman, drank so much alcohol they forgot to do the dishes and they piled up so high that they turned into Sarah Silva Synthia Stout, and by the time they woke from the drunken haze they realized the dishes had mold growing from them, and it would be best to throw them out with all the bottles. "The cows and the clothes." So I have dug up several Jaw bones, which leads me to conclude there is more than one dead cow here, Bones upon bones. The deeper I dig, and everywhere I dig, I keep finding bones. Huge bones! At first Logan and I were convinced we had found a dinosaur bone, and briefly imagined careers as paleontologists, but then realized shortly after that we were holding cow bones. The jawbones reminded me of Samson taking on a thousand men with the donkey's jawbone, and I stood there trying to imagine how he did it; Do you think he stab them all, or threw it? I imagine that he killed some of them with his bare fists as well, but that's another story and another time. As well as all these bones that we found, we found all sorts of clothes and shoes. Not pairs of shoes, mainly single shoes and about twelve different styles and sizes. There are either a lot of people walking around with one shoe on or these people have been living with cows that like to play dress up.
We had another great church service today. Our other host (Nosko probably not how you spell his name) is a retired pastor, but he did a sermon for a church in a neighboring town that we were fortunate enough to be a part of. It was really nice to hear his take on Christianity, and good to hear him finally speak more than a few words, for he is a man of few. One thing that really stuck out to me was him speaking about having a persistence to get closer to God and his word, and believing what the Bible says fully. He spoke of a man who had been a Pastor in Bulgaria, and how he was being asked questions about the story of Jonah and how he was swallowed by a whale. The critics where saying that a whales throat is far too small to allow something as big as a human to be swallowed. The man said if the story was in reverse and it was Jonah who had swallowed a whale. He would still believe the story because it's in the Bible and it's God’s word. It made me think about this man’s faith, and how awesome it must be to have so much of it. He said you can't just pick out the parts of the Bible that sound possible; you must have faith that all things are possible through the Lord (Matthew 19:26). That was a big blow to my reality and seems to go against everything logical, but the man is right. I just hope that my faith can start becoming as strong, and I can let go of my own understanding of possible and impossible. A friend of mine told me "don't put God in a box,” easier said than done, but it's something I'm working on, and I have been trying to break down my walls, to try and imagine God’s unfathomable greatness and wonder.
out front of a monastery
waterfalls everywhere here
Alex, Rueman, and Nosko q'in up some dinner
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Posted in General Posts by logan brendel on 7/21/2011
We have arrived! It’s going by so fast, and I love every minute. My group and Ihave made it to Bulgaria, and we are being well taken care of by some amazing spirit filled people. Our hosts: Rueman, Alex, and Deeana are some of the most hospitablewonderful people I have ever met. Rueman is a Pastor first, and a jokester the rest of the time. He is great. Alex is the nicest most loving man person I have ever come across (besides for my Pop’s of course), and he has a wealth of knowledge in the Word, which has become such a blessing to our team. He is also our interpreterduring our stay here, which makes all the difference. Deeana has been making us meals and keeping us alive and healthy in a major way. She is another great gentile soul that makes the most amazing meals, which I am going to have to get the recipesbefore we leave at the end of the month. I also found it interesting that we have watermelon at the end of almost every meal, I think they really like it over here, but I’mallergic, so none of the good stuff for me). There are more people involved in the process, but this isn't a genealogy passage or an introduction blog; it's one about this amazing time my team and I have been having since we have arrived.
I knew God had a plan by putting me in all these manual labor jobs, because manual labor is exactly what it is (and I have really enjoyed it). No electric tools here, I have seen more than one carriage with a donkey towing it, running up the street with its owner and his goods on their way from the store. We are in a beautiful remote town about 120 miles out of Sofia where Rueman's headquarters are stationed. He runs a church, a social outreach facility, a publishing company, and a training facility to teach pastors and Sunday school teachers. We however, are helping convert an old beautiful government building into a refuge for abused and battered children and women. This place is so great! It is huge and already looks amazing. We (The guys I mean) have been helping build a fence around the perimeter, by digging postholes, clearing trees and bushes, and cleaning the pathways to make the place look cleaner. The women have been turning the inside into a great place, by making the kitchen fully functional, and cleaning the place from top to bottom. My team is a great bunch of folks and I have adopted them as my second family. Yesterday we went to an underground church that by no exaggeration was in a 15x20 ft. building that was ridiculously hot, everyone was shoulder to shoulder, and I have to say It was so great. These people accepted us with open arms and were nice enough to invite us back. A few of us went in front and read some scripture and told them a little about our mission, which was a little nerve racking for me a first but after much prayer I got my nerves contained and the Lord gave me the calmness to deliver His message. I am so blessed to be here in Bulgaria and can't believe it still. Every morning I wake up, and I stare out off my balcony at the most beautiful countryside covered in sunflowers and thank God he made all this possible.
(picture of the team walking the streets of Bucharest)
(on our way back from church in Bulgaria, with our American friend kip in the and alex on the right)
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Posted in General Posts by logan brendel on 7/13/2011
We made it! After a couple flights, a stop in Poland for some coffee, and a stifling hot crowded bus ride, we made it to the Hostel safely. It's hot and humid.... let me rephrase this... It's hot and humid... there are no analogies for this. A/C is an open window and a cold shower. I'm real happy about the shower and I am taking advantage of it while we have one. Bucharest is a beautiful city depending who you ask... And since I'm the one telling, you will have to take into account what I consider beautiful. The buildings are worn down and the streets are crowded and dirty, dogs set each other off at all hours of the day, graffitti has a permanent residence on all buildings and trains it can find, and we get around three to one on the exchange. What's not to like.
Ok business, we are taking a train ride to Bulgaria come Friday. Our team has shifted a little bit we lost two members to another squad but have gained three new incredible ladies who are a great fit to the group. In Bulgaria we will be working in a ministry that centers around on working with the Bulgarian youth, who we will be trying to reach through ministry, testimony, and evangelism. I am looking forward to Bulgaria, especially since it's a country that's not even one on our list of countries to visit. It's always nice being reminded that God's plan supercedes my own expectations of parameters and understanding. I'm really excited to see what he has in store for us this month to come.
I just want to say how happy and thankful I am of all my supporters who have help me make it this far and all my friends and family who have help me up to this point, I couldn't have done it without your prayer and financial support. Launch ends at the end of the week and then the real hard work begins I can't wait.
(The group first arriving in Romania...... we aren't quite sure of where we are.)
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Posted in General Posts by logan brendel on 5/31/2011
Just got back from training camp in the beautiful back country of Tennesse, which was amazing!
Training camp was weird for me at first, and second… and third. After encounters with the Holy Spirit my entire experience changed in an instant, and my skepticism came to a screeching halt. I can say with exuberating confidence that I have never been so close to the Lord and my faith has never felt so strong. I came in with my arms crossed and a little hesitant in my faith, to say the least. I left with my arms in the air praising Him and leaning on my faith entirely. My relationship with the Lord has grown exponentially. I met a ton of great brothers and sisters in Christ that were able to help me grasp what it might look like to live in a community setting. I got a little thin, but truthfully I don’t think that’s even possible at my current weight. Worship went from strange and confusing, to amazing and alluring. I was able to let my walls come crumbling down and allow the Lord to come in and take hold of my heart. This was a huge step and a WONDER-full (Yeah team WoNdeR!) experience. There are just about fifty people on the X-squad that I met and became to know quite well, and quite quickly. There were a lot of first times while in the woods of Tennessee and all of them positive. If this is any sort of glimpse of what’s to come I can’t wait any longer. Wrap me up and ship me out I’m ready to start this Race! I’m ready to take off the training wheels and spread God's light over the darkness covering this earth. There is hope and love for these nations, and places in God's kingdom waiting for them. I can’t wait to tell them the good news once we get there. I don’t know yet God's plan for me while over there, but I have never been so ready for uncertainty.
“Like anybody I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.” -MLK
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